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Mozilla has released its first web browser update for 2018 on January 23. The update offers faster browsing with web graphics engine enhancements as well as opt-in Tracking Protection.

A faster & smoother web with graphics engine enhancements

We all have experienced that moment when we’re waiting patiently for a particular page to load & the images & text get choppy.

According to Mozilla, the update brings a new graphic engine that uses a dedicated CPU thread in order to reduce the choppiness that happens while loading text as well as images on some web pages.

In tests with a simulated Javascript-heavy page, engineers of Mozilla could see a speed boost of around 30 percent.

Tracking Protection

The Firefox browser was one of the first to introduce tracking protection feature in the year 2015. When enabled, this feature aggressively blocked ads, analytics trackers, as well as social share buttons that record users behavior on websites.

Earlier, you needed to use Private Browsing in order to enable Tracking Protection. However, the latest Firefox Quantum 58 release enables users to opt into tracking protection on all sites, whether you are browsing in private mode or simply using Firefox innate standard viewing mode.

Apart from privacy, it has been noticed that speed was one of the many advantages to having Tracking Protection turned on.

For turning on Tracking Protection, users need to open their “Preferences” & click on “Privacy & Security.” And after that they need to scroll down to “Tracking Protection,” & then click on “Always.” It will then be enabled.

New features for Firefox for Android

Improved Bookmarking

Bookmarking feature has been revised in order to help users quickly get to the sites they want to visit. Instead of a dialog box, users will be getting a full screen where they can easily organize & see their folders, create new ones, as well as move their bookmarks in their respective folders.

Progressive Web Apps (PWA) Support

The Progressive Web Apps support has also been improved. When users are browsing in Firefox for Android & come across a site that is a PWA, they can see a house-shaped button in their address bar. If users want to add that site as an app, they will need to simply tap the house-shaped button & the site’s icon will appear on their home screen. Now, they will be able to visit that site by just tapping its icon – full-screen, outside of the browser UI, without an address bar.

Firefox 58 is available for download for Windows, Linux, Mac, as well as Android.